


Time Tells Us Nothing

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-17
Updated: 2010-08-17
Packaged: 2017-10-11 03:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm sorry for interrupting you. I thought you were someone else. You remind me of someone else I once knew," Martha tells him because that's what you do in the case of mistaken identity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Tells Us Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Bowties Are Cool series five ficathon—the prompt: "Eleven/Martha, awkward".

“I’m sorry for interrupting you. I thought you were someone else. You remind me of someone else I once knew,” Martha tells him because that’s what you do in the case of mistaken identity.

 

*

 

The next time she runs into him, he’s fighting off yet another alien invasion with a young ginger companion.

She laughs. “Doctor?”

(Martha thinks about apologizing about what happened two weeks ago but decides not.)

He blinks then places his hands in his pockets. Silence.

“You beat me here,” she says.

“I have time machine,” he replies, matter-of-factly.

“It’s good seeing you,” she smiles, walking away.

 

*

 

This time she sees his ginger companion at a coffee shop—at her coffee shop, she notes.

“Hello,” she says, brushing her hair out her face. “I saw you two month ago with the Doctor. We have something in common.”

His ginger companion looks up from her magazine, “I’m Amy. He told me to come here to investigate you.”

“I’m Martha, and that sounds like him.”

After some bonding, Amy invites her back to the TARDIS. She mentions how much he has been talking about her since their first encounter weeks back

(It is two day ago from Amy’s perspective. They are time travellers, Martha reminds herself.)

 

*

 

“You’ve redecorated,” Martha says, twirling throughout the TARDIS and finding new surprises here, there and everywhere.

“Had to, Jones,” he laughs. “I crashed while regenerated—lost the pool. I liked that pool. It got replaced with a library. I need a fifth library. I’ve acquired many lost books lately. Or, maybe, it’s a zoo. I don’t go in there too much so you can never be sure.”

He tells her all this while playing with his sleeve. She wonder if he’s ever been this nervous with anyone else or just past friends—companions, friends would implied they had more contact after she left her Doctor—that causes him to act this way.

“He got lost looking for a laundry room last week,” Amy speaks. “I didn’t even know he did laundry.”

Martha suppresses a chuckle.

(She wonders if this Doctor ever located the sweater she lost in one of the many rooms she ventured in. She doesn’t ask.)

 

*

  
The Doctor asks her to accompany Amy and him to back Venice. He says something about wanting to settle a score with Casanova. It’s so like him.

She declines, however. “I have career now—a _proper_ career. I can’t defend the Earth without a roof over my head.”

He looks disappointed.

“Don’t be like that,” she smiles. “You still have my mobile? You should try keeping in touch with your friends with this regeneration.”

He laughs. (She notes how good this Doctor has gotten with genuine laughter.) “Stay out of trouble, Martha Jones.”

 

*

 

She receives a call a year later.

(Three days from his perspective.)

 

*

  
She requests he parks the TARDIS in her flat like ‘the old days’. (She chuckles over having ‘old days’.) They exchange ‘hellos’. Amy is here too, alongside a taller boy. From the looks of it — the boy’s mooning over Amy like she once did with her Doctor—she would say they were dating but she doesn’t want to make any assumptions.

He speaks, “Amy and Rory—that’s Rory; say hello to Rory, Martha—”

“Uh, nice to meet you, Rory,” she says, surprised at her compliance.

“—suggested we take you on a vacation,” he continues.

“It wasn’t our idea,” Rory spits out. “It was his. We just had to convince him to phone you.”

“He was very grumpy-face after you left,” Amy says in a slight sing-a-long voice. “We couldn’t have that.”

She grins. “I’ll come along,” she begins, “only if you promise you’ll get me home by tomorrow.” Martha, of course, knows that with a time machine she has the chance to push back tomorrow indefinitely and, with this Doctor, indefinitely might not be such a bad thing. It might actually be fun.

He nods a yes, smiling. She accepts.

 

*

 

They visit lost moons and flea shops located on Mars.

They stop another Cybermen takeover on Earth and visit a world that reminds her of a fairytale.

Amy and she bonds over their adventures with the Weeping Angels. Martha hugs her new friend tight after learning of the angel in her eye. Amy forces Martha to make a vow that she’ll never work to support their Doctor again.

(Martha wonders when Amy’s Doctor and her Doctor became their Doctor; it must have been when she accepted his invitation. She then questions if she’s okay with this development.)

They move on to tales about starwhales and the Judoon on the moon.

 

*

 

She finds the Doctor, late at night, thinking by the TARDIS console.

“Can’t sleep?” she whispers.

“I don’t sleep,” he replies. “Well I do, not as much as humans. You should know this, Jones.”

“I know. I was trying to comfort you,” she laughs. She finds herself doing that more with each passing day.

“Oh.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Time, space, Daleks—_ha_! If I could finish them for good without forcing to choose friends—Earth—and defending them … they always force me choose.”

She’s leaning against the console beside him, “You encountered them again?”

“WWII London,” he replies, halfheartedly.

They spend the rest of the night sitting down—back to back—talking about old adventures they shared, the new adventures he had with Amy (and, with extension, Rory), and her busy life has a freelance alien fighter slash family doctor until she falls asleep. He pretends to do the same.

(The next morning, she decides that this Doctor could be her Doctor too.)

 

*

 

“Tell me,” she says, “what’s with the bowtie?” She gets closer to him then finds herself fixing his prize wardrobe position.

“You’ve been talking to Pond,” he teases. “Bowties are cool.”

She pushes his shoulder playfully, then jokes, “So you do say that at every opportunity.”

“No, only for you,” he pauses, “and my bowtie didn’t need fixing.”

She stares at him for a couple minutes, puzzled, when he simply walks off to where ever he goes when he’s not flying the TARDIS.

(‘He’s wrong. It was crooked,’ she tells herself.)

 

*

 

“Tomorrow has been delayed long enough,” she mentions three days later. “I should really get back to work.”

He hides a frown.

She runs off to say her farewells to Amy; later, Rory.

 

*

 

“You’ll see me again, mister,” Martha says, echoing words from a lifetime ago.

He mouths ‘goodbye’.

She goes for in for the hug.

 

*

 

The Doctor shows up the following morning. “We never visited Pluto.”

Martha glares at him for an undetermined amount of time before she speaks, “Pluto?”

“There’s a myth about Pluto. That time itself got lost there. Uh, someone should investigate—Amy and Rory, you and _I_.”

She laughs, “You are—why didn’t you just tell me you wanted me to stay?”

He offers his hand. She takes it.

“Pluto, it is.”


End file.
